Michal's blog

What’s the right speed?

My name is Mic. I am a leadership coach, entrepreneur and former COO  who’s worked in the tech sector for the last two decades with founders and senior executive teams. My purpose is to help them build, grow and thrive. I aspire to help leaders and teams get to a state of “flow” -- for themselves, their teams and their organizations. 

When you reach a state of flow you can achieve growth and have a lasting transformative positive impact. 

Each week, my plan is to offer a reflection of what I’m hearing in my practice and my team’s work in leadership development. It’s an incredible time in our human history - my intention is to offer insight, practical tools you can immediately apply and comfort in our shared experience of managing through COVID-19 and leading in these especially challenging times.

Some of our clients are growing like gangbusters right now. It’s a paradox. On the one hand, the opportunity to slow down, recalibrate, deeply reflect and redefine what’s important seems so precious, rare and noble to pursue. And, for some clients who are in grocery retail, health or other sectors experiencing critical shifts, radical innovation, and hyper growth, the opposite is true. They want to figure out how to go faster!

Our team experienced something similar. When the pandemic first started getting real -- I mean all of us realizing this was not going away any time soon, and that the entire world was experiencing this together -- I wanted to move quickly to support our community.  As an over functioner, I started with all the resources I could access to get moving in that direction f-n fast. That’s ok, but not effective as a leader of a team. How was I going to get my team aligned and in action as fast as I could do so myself? 

It felt like our team ground to a halt -- and we're only five people. I could go fast, but they weren’t with me and that exacerbated the feeling of immense frustration.  In the same time frame, several of our clients were experiencing the same thing. They all run agile development processes, yet none of them could seem to go fast without senior leadership getting into the weeds, micro managing, pushing, driving their teams at the front line. It wasn’t simply their directors or VPs, but everyone in their companies.. How is that scaleable or tenable in an organization 100’s large with aspirations to grow even bigger? It’s absolutely not. 

I felt this pain acutely during our coaching and training session. I wanted leaders to experience the growth they now so desperately needed. Not just through brute force, but rather through a transformation in mindset and skill set that would last beyond this crisis. 

On my own team, I knew it came down to goal and role clarity within the context of our behavioural norms. Did everyone understand what the goal had become? Was everyone clear on their part in service of the whole? How could our team support each other at breakneck speed?

Here’s how we tackled it: 

1 - Goal clarity

1. What is the new goal you are trying to achieve and how does it support your Mission & Vision as a company? What context can you offer your team to motivate them and ensure everyone understands why we’re making a change and the opportunity we’re after?. This is where we started on my team. Our mission is to accelerate the growth and transform the leadership skills of our clients, to serve our community (leaders and aspiring leaders in the technology sector). Our new goal was to get free workshops out in the community as fast as possible to support even more leaders than just our alumni and current clients that are timely and build skills that are relevant right now like resilience, empathy, focus, etc. 
2. The goals need to be SMART - Specific: Create a roadmap of topics we could test with our alumni for relevance and impact. Measurable: We wanted to see how many people showed up, what their comments and ratings were after the workshops. Attainable: We weren’t developing an entire new curriculum, we were leveraging what we’ve already done and focusing on the skills that were particularly relevant now. Responsible: There is one person with the A on their head to drive this forward, it fits within his role and there was a subset of us accountable to get him what he needed to make a public offer. Timely - We gave ourselves a deadline of two days to get ready with a go-live date 10 days out. 

With these in place, clear, focused action could occur. Everyone knew the priority and the context. Those who were responsible and accountable could track progress. 

2 - Role clarity

1. Who is ultimately responsible for what? How do the differing roles interact to get the goal accomplished. Is everyone clear? In our team that meant Bruce was responsible to get the word out. I was responsible to define the topics with the help of two folks on my team. Our lead facilitator was responsible for creating our internal guides and resources (with help from the team) to run the workshops. Bruce had to provide ‘what done looked like’ - what was the end product we needed to provide? 

Just as it was with goal clarity, clear, focused action could occur. We knew who was driving what when, who was helping, what the deadlines were and what done looked like. 

3 - Team ‘norms’ 

These are the ground rules for how things get done -- fast or slow. They are often implicit within every organization.These rules are largely based on the values of the organization, and the stories that tell us how we know when we are living them or if we are on the other side.  My two most cherished experiences of team norms that informed how I built a lasting culture at Freshbooks came from my days at McKinsey and Mozilla. 

1. What is your governance structure for decision making and communication? Case example:  Mozilla - as an open source project - had a very specific way of working. How software was defined, created and shipped. Early in my tenure there (and I was there when we were only a few hundred, much more nimble and clear), I was made a ‘Driver’. I’d never heard the term before, but quickly learned what it meant in the process for shipping. We also had very clear rules of engagement for quality and conflict. We knew something was shippable when it passed our QA process for ensuring it didn’t break the browser or the use case. In the case of conflicts like disagreements about quality or feature readiness, we resorted to roles and a clearly documented and lived governance structure that still exists today - including the benevolent dictator. 
2. What are your lived values? At McKinsey - the Firm’s values and vision served as the norm for any team you we on. The engagement leader provided the structure to support those values. On the best teams I was part of, the leader established a kickoff, mid-point check-in, and retrospective or review upon completion. He offered the goals, the context within the client’s goals, and the Firm’s mission. He athen provided an opportunity for each of us to offer the strengths we could bring to the team in the areas we each wanted to learn and grow. This was both an excellent example of providing formal mechanisms (I’ve talked about before in my accountability article) for establishing team norms, and a way of holding ourselves accountable to each other, the client as well as the Firm's vision and values. 

 

As always, I hope this is helpful in providing you insight and immediately applicable practical approaches to get to the right speed within your organization.  ♥

Creating effective boundaries

The third in my series of insights and practical tools for Leading in a 100% Covid World.

My name is Mic, I am a leadership coach working largely in the tech sector for the last two decades with founders and senior executive teams helping them build, grow and thrive. My aspiration is flow - the state of being in flow for oneself, your team and ideally your organization. I believe when we’re in this place we can accelerate our growth and have lasting transformative positive impact towards the goals we have as people, teams and organizations. Weekly I will offer a reflection of what I’m hearing in my practice and my team’s work in leadership development. It’s an incredible time in our human history - my hope is this will give you insight, practical tools you can immediately apply and comfort in our shared experience of managing through Covid19 and leading in these especially challenging times.

The new normal is isolation, strange unfamiliar and maybe unsettling at times. And, as we each find our own new normals, go through the different stages of adjusting, it most likely does not feel stable. We don’t know how long this will last, our normal routines - gym, travel, shopping, work - are massively disrupted and at times it may feel like we’re grasping for stable - as my coach Leslie Williams put it - “I now have an uninvited guest in my house called fear and anxiety - it’s not necessarily mine but it’s certainly here”. And, we want to be productive, feel like we have forward momentum and purpose. That may feel daunting to organize.

I’d like to offer a way, a way of finding balance, rediscovering your own resilience and strength, and learning more about what you need because your go to practices may not be available to you any more. The most effective, resilient and capable leaders that I work with when faced with 'i don't know what to do' get curious, mindful and energized to co-actively be in practice about their most effective ways forward. Let’s get playful and serious about finding out what will work for you now. 

1 - Take EXTRA GOOD CARE OF YOURSELF

Now more than ever, we've got to take really good care of ourselves, I mean extra good. Like fall in love with yourself and those you care about all over again. Do all the great things you'd want to do for them and YOU. This is so important right now because in order for you to lead, parent, support anyone you need to be capable and a huge part of that is starting with yourself, checking in to find out what’s needed and creating an ongoing practice of self care and resilience. 

• What are the practices you can do to nourish your mind, body, and spirit? 
• Start with the basics - how much sleep are you getting? What are you eating? How are you moving your body? Are you someone that already knows how to do this well or is this an opportunity to learn more, join an online community or buddy up with a friend online?

Get curious and playful about what might work for you now. Being playful with your practices is critical to resilience - given we’re all feeling the feels and that can change within one day or one hour - it’s all ok, let go of the notion of 100% or perfection, notice how you feel, what shows up when you try something observe yourself so that you can best judge what brings you ease joy or fun. Yes fun, even in these trying times. Our bodies need to regulate the cortisol being produced by this stress and anxiety and the best ways to do that is to orient towards things that bring you joy and pleasure. For me right now that’s cooking, walking the dog, and I feel blessed to love my work.   

2 - Physical space 

@joshualong3  My home is my work now, and my work is my home. 😀 ##workingfromhome ##corona ##foryou ##coronavirus♬ original sound - joshualong3

This meme was recently shared with me by one of the CEOs I’ve worked with - I hope it has the intended impact of humour ;) 

It made me laugh out loud - Whether you live in a tiny space or large home you still need to find a space you feel you can work. One of the coaches on our team had a great practice around this. First, she cleaned but like CLEANED - got rid of as much clutter as possible cleaned all surfaces created the feeling for herself and her husband of Freshness. 

Then they designated work spaces. Many of them were unconventional - like the dresser in her bedroom that is serving as a standing desk, the kitchen counter (I like that one too), etc. 

Finally, they actively discuss each day where they each want to be. Because they live in a very open small space they need some distance so they can’t hear each other work. So I’ve noticed she moves around - for each video meeting I’ve been with her in the last few days she’s been in a different space and I only hear her. Pretty awesome. 

It’s also important to have variety - moving around so it doesn’t feel like your’ stuck in your basement all the time or in one immovable space. The more we can feel freedom within our own spaces the better for our minds and productivity. 

And the schedule - we as a team redefined what our new norms needed to be to work most effectively. Across my entire coaching practice of all leaders *every one is noticing they are not as productive, creative, motivated* That is ok and normal under these conditions - this was my earlier point about body health and processing cortisol. So on our team - that means - lunch has become sacred. From noon to 1:30 no team meetings are booked. People can use that time however they need to replenish themselves. It’s important. What I’m noticing for me is that I need times in between to walk the dog and get in the garden - both of those things instantly lift my spirits and bring back energy to whatever I’m working on. 

Parents - this is what I’ve heard across my practice - first they are getting all the resources to support their kids. Many are creating schedules for the week that includes screen learning time, play and creativity, and exercise. One of my best friends is a former principle, has 3 kids at home ranging in ages from 8 to 17 - she also has been home schooling her children on and off for decades. She turned their dining room into the classroom for the day. Lessons would be posted on the walls. The entire space was dedicated to learning during the day so the kids could be clear on what they needed to learn and also room enough to play. We need the same things.

3- Boundaries - In & Out

As I was reflecting and writing this article, again my coach offered another important nuance. Boundaries are not just about what we are letting in they are also about what we are giving out. Our focused energy is now more than ever precious - this unwanted house guest called fear and anxiety is taking a certain amount away from us every day - like it or not. And so let’s get mindful of where we want to be focused, what work we want to do, and which people we want to work with. Of course we aren’t fully at choice in this - there are people projects and tasks we are obligated to do (particularly if you're working right now). I’m offering being mindful in how you fill your day so that it doesn’t drain you but rather gives you energy back as much and whenever is possible. Here are some questions to ask yourself about your working day to support this outcome. And, if you’re not working right now - the Mason Jar exercise is something I did when I was in between that really helped me get clear about that. 

Step 1:  Understand your strengths 

1. What do you love doing?
1. What have people said you’re particularly amazing at? Don’t know, now’s the time to ask - send out a short survey to friends and work colleagues you trust (to tell the real truth) current or from your past. 
2. What are your core skills?
• Take the time to think about and write down the responsibilities and tasks in the work that you do that you 1) Love and are great at; 2) Like and are good at; 3) Don’t Like but are good at; 4) Don’t Like and are not good at

Step 2: Structure your day

1. Consider - how can you structure your day to ensure you’re getting some and enough of love and great or like and good and minimize the don’t likes. 
2. Is this an opportunity to elevate someone else you work with in the areas that either you’re not strong or are strong but it doesn’t give you joy

Step 3: Learn more about You, your values and your style

Find out about yourself - the more that we can optimize our work and surroundings to support the best of ourselves the more resilient we can be. 

1. what are your values (and therefore your triggers - the things that are pissing you off), 
2. what do you know of your personality style - have you tried some personality tests? Here are a few that I like and that we use in our coaching practices. In addition a few more that many organizations I’ve worked with use within their teams:
   • Strengthsfinder
   • Enneagram
   • 16personalities
3. Are you a giver or a taker? if you're a giver (get joy from being in service of others) be mindful of how much you’re doing to ensure your energy stores don’t get too depleted. 
   • Here’s a great resource by Adam Grant on this topic where I first learned the phrase

By turning yourself into a science experiment - meaning observing yourself in action through any given day you will begin to notice what is needed to create the optimal day more often, set healthy boundaries and foster greater resilience for yourself. Take care :) 

 

Leading remotely in a 100% Covid World - How to manage a team remotely

When I was at Mozilla Firefox, our team was all over the world, across multiple time zones, cultures and languages. We had to rangle many factors beyond video, chat and shared docs to enable connection and work to happen.

In the face of a rapidly changing situation with Covid-19, most companies have had to go 100% remote for the foreseeable future.  In the tech sector, we’ve worked for decades with distributed teams leveraging technology to share work and maintain connection. Some teams and companies may not have all of the infrastructure in place at the ready, and leaders may have different levels of experience in understanding how to help their workforce to transition to an online environment. In fact, you may think that how you work now is simply how you will continue --no need for adaptation, right? Wrong. 

There’s a lot to unpack about leading in a remote context, and over the next few articles, I will unpack each piece for you. My approach is practical, immediately applicable, and ideally transformative. 

Today’s focus: Running a virtual meeting.

What you did before won’t work the same way now

Having a decision making, problem solving or update meeting via video is not the same as in person. Even though you can “see” your colleagues, you will not have the same physical cues for when to speak, interrupt or offer. You won’t have a whiteboard to draw on. Your quality of technology won’t be ubiquitous. You won’t be able to have the hallway chat on the way into the meeting, or on the way out.

Be deliberate. Be mindful. Be patient. 

Virtual meetings are an opportunity to enable greater focus, accountability and follow through. Preparation is key to ensure an easier transition. People want to keep going, they want to stay productive and move forward so keep up that confident future oriented focus and celebrate the success of each positive accomplishment big or small. 

Here are five tips and resources we use (and teach) that maximize productivity, deepen connection, and ensure focus.

1) Have an agenda. Send it in advance. 

• What is the outcome you are looking for?
• If a follow-up from another meeting, what changes from the last meeting are you trying to solve for
• What data or pre-reading can you send in advance?
• What questions can people come prepared to answer?

2) Do the math.

• Consider how much time you have for the meeting, how long each person might speak and then shorten the list of attendees. For example, if you have 30 minutes and 8 people, even if each person said something for 2 minutes, that’s half your meeting. 
• Who can directly impact the questions you need answered? 

3) Establish meeting norms

• No distractions --be 100% there for 30, 60 or 90 minutes. Nothing is going to happen that will be so radical as to warrant the lack of productivity distractions create. For example,“Can you say that again, I wasn’t listening?” Being there but not being there demonstrates to others the meeting and this time is not important. 
• All cameras on. Show your face. Humans communicate more through body language than speaking. 
• Deliberate inclusion. When we are all 100% remote we will need new ways to hear from everyone in the meeting. No talking over each other --when asking a question either select a person to answer and then have them nominate the next person to speak, or let them pick the first person to answer and then nominate the next person. 
• Check in and check out. Check in --does everyone have the agenda and does anyone need a change in the order? Check out --did everyone get what they needed and summarize next steps

4) Be clear on roles.

• Facilitator - this person ensures great discussion is had and holds time relative to the agenda, some times it’s easier to give the time keeper to someone else so you can focus on the quality of participation
• Note taker - this is the driver of accountability. Capture the decisions that were made, who is doing what by when, etc.How will those notes and actions be captured? Eg gDoc? other?
• Devil’s advocate - when aiming for greater creativity it’s excellent to use tools to counterbalance group think - one of them is the Devil’s advocate (although in many cases there’s plenty of skeptics and we need more inclusion) you can also try on DeBono’s 6 hats as another great resources
• What else is needed? Can someone own the agenda and give the facilitator cues if you’re over time etc. 

5) Identify tools that work for you.

• Zoom, Hangout, GDoc’s, Slack, Confluence, Jira, Asana, Workast, etc There are many tools you can use for many purposes. What will you use for what? What can you standardize on so everyone can find things as needed?
• How will you capture notes and progress?
• What about you and your surrounding - Ensure you’re in a quiet spot with everything you need (water, notes, etc)

Let go of ‘being right’ and ease into the conversation

As a leader, your job is to stay calm in the face of rapid change and fear. You’ve got to hold the line (your north star of focus) while staying out of the weeds to determine what needs to shift when. Be available (with compassion and clarity) and be both open to and offer feedback balancing directness and empathy. 

Covid-19 is a unique global, human experience. People will be going through different emotional reactions at different times. It’s not linear. They will also want to get back to work and ‘normal’ as fast as possible. Support them, and also cut yourself some slack. It’s likely the first time this has happened for you and your team members. Don’t strive for perfect, just effective.

Stay curious about yourself and others through this time - how do you handle stress, fear, ambiguity? What support do you need to stay calm and resilient e.g., get out for a walk in nature, make a lovely tea, talk to a friend?

Thanks for listening, hope this was helpful :D

 

Leading remotely in a 100% Covid World - Fostering accountability virtually

We are working, living our lives and adapting. I am coaching - myself and our wonderful coaching team are continuing to run remote leadership development workshops. My clients (Leaders of companies and teams) are working and adjusting to the current isolation. Parents are figuring out how to educate, entertain and incorporate their kids into their daily virtual lives. I have seen everyone go through varying stages of fear, calm, questioning, sadness - all of the feels and I am humbled to be there for them. 

In these times people are grasping for things they can control and ways to stay connected. As a leader you want to stay grounded and really be listening with empathy for how they are before jumping into action or offering. Find your ways to do that for yourself so that you can truly be there for people. For myself I am doing a daily resilience and replenishing practice which for me looks like walking the dog, meditation, virtual yoga, working (I love my work), farming (I love where we live) and writing. For some of the leaders I work with that looks like a daily workout, cooking, dusting off their hobby list and working. What does yours look like? And, my hope is to continue to share practical approaches to help you lead remotely with ease and impact.

Every leader we are interacting with is saying that people are looking for the one thing they can do to help, focus on, that ensures they are doing the ‘best right thing’. So, offering the right structures, rituals, etc that will keep people focused on the most important initiatives, deepen social connection in their teams, foster balance in work and life while enabling the positivity of forward momentum. That may seem like a tall order, especially when you yourself may not feel balanced or positive and not sure how to do all that through this screen on your computer  ;) Here are a simple set of 5 steps you can do right now to get this impact.

1. Define the Expectations and Results

What is the #1 or 2 priorities, projects or goals your team should be focused on right now? Let’s not lose sight of the long term strategic goals your company is working towards. Break that down into the smaller bits and prioritize them (more on that to come in another piece). This will help people keep the future in mind in the midst of the more chaotic now. My favourite approach to getting clear on expectations comes from Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead - how can you paint what done looks like? This could be you writing it out and sharing, collaborating with your team or direct report(s) to rough out and straw model the project, final report, document etc you’re working on. It’s an opportunity for collaboration, creativity and deepening your relationship. Instead of you simply saying we need this metric increased by x% you can find out what’s motivating to that person about it or to you or to the team or company. What are the impacts on the customer or stakeholders if this is successful. Where are the boundaries for creativity eg we have a limited budget, timeframe, resources or we’re expecting a sustainable return, etc. So many factors go beyond just the metric or thing that’s done. This is a great opportunity to share and learn together. 

2. Deepen Connection and Involve the Team

First and foremost - in this time especially - demonstrating grounded authentic empathy as a leader is most important. How is everyone? What do they need? What are they finding easy or hard? Check in *before* you move the doing, solving or agenda. It may be they’re good and  want to dive in, it may be they want to share - and that may change day to day. Then - relative to the priority - find out what they are willing to do relative to that outcome. What do they hear? What do they want to do? What motivates them about it. This is where the deepening of social connection and commitment comes in. Check your assumptions - you may be motivated by the metric, they may be motivated by the creativity involved. What’s the learning or growth opportunity that is available to them? And, the most crucial part of this puzzle is to find out what are *they willing to commit to do*. If you find yourself back in the…’ok, i’ll do x, y’ then you’ve missed the mark. It’s about shared context (step 1) and what they want to do about it. 

3. Create the Structures that Integrate

This is where we want to find out how we will know we’re on the right track or we accomplished the task at hand? How will we celebrate progress and learn from mis-steps or hypotheses that didn’t work out as intended. How frequently do we want to check in? In the now completely virtual world - you want to figure this out together and leverage the tools available at your company or bring some in. For example, some leaders are doing a twice daily team video call that’s optional to first check in on how everyone is doing and also celebrate progress or discuss obstacles. Other leaders are using Jira boards, shared spreadsheets, company dashboards, etc to track progress. What formal structures can you leverage to track progress on the way and deepen connection among members of your team; you will want to assess together the existing assets you both have to integrate progress against the outcome so that it doesn’t become an extra task to report but rather something that’s easy to do.  What will they do to get help? Is this an opportunity to elevate their game, learn something new - can we make this an explicit part of their development and growth. What can you do to support - have you discussed where the bounds of ‘micro-management’ vs support are. Maybe this task is something they’ve never done before and so they’d like more help than usual, or maybe they are the type of person who doesn’t feel comfortable asking for help so you checking in might be a way of quietly supporting without getting in the way. Figure it out together. 

4. Measure what is accomplished and share in public spaces

What exactly will tell you that you’ve accomplished the goal. Is this a KPI you can identify? Or something that can be converted into a SMART set of micro-goals. Essentially you want to answer, how will we know we are tracking in the right direction, it was done and successful and by when? 

The critical practice here is bit-size leading and lagging indicators of success that you both collaborate on defining. And created a shared space or tool (spreadsheet, jira board, etc) to celebrate progress and learn along the way. 

5. Deepen connection by Repeating and Rewarding

In the current context of remote work and self-isolation going on around the globe people need even greater human connection. Checking in on projects in fun and rewarding ways are wonderful opportunities to deepen that connection. Champion the progress you’re seeing with virtual high fives, love bubbles that float across your shared screen, and where it’s lacking with an effective balance of empathy and directness,  find out what’s getting in the way? What do they need? What do you need?

Leverage the tools available to you (even the simplest that of virtual team check ins) create a repeating cadence around them, celebrate progress and champion learning and then let go of any worry and fear it won’t get done. 

I hope this was a helpful approach to lead remotely and create engaging productive :D